Soil water content map construction using microwave sensor and agro-hydrological model**

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Freshwater scarcity is one of the biggest global risks due to population growth and climate change. Agriculture accounts for about 70% total fresh water consumption. In the current practice, the agriculture irrigation efficiency is estimated to be around 50% to 60% due to poor irrigation strategy. Thus an important step towards managing water crisis is to increase the irrigation efficiency to have precision irrigation. One important step towards the precision irrigation is to close the irrigation decision making loop to form a closed-loop irrigation system. Preliminary studies have shown that closed-loop operation can lead to a significant saving of water. In the development of such a closed-loop irrigation system, one critical step is to measure the water content inside the soil. ****Beyond Agronomy Inc. provides leading edge agronomic services in Western Canada. One strategic direction of Beyond Agronomy Inc. is to develop closed-loop irrigation solutions. Today, farms have access to soil moisture probes or hand feel methods to determine soil moisture content. However, these methods do not account for the variability in soil moisture that exists across each field given changes in topography, soil texture and crop management history. ****In this project, we work with Beyond Agronomy Inc. to develop a way to construct the soil water content map using microwave sensors and agro-hydrological modeling. A water content map is a critical element on the road towards closed-loop irrigation. The success of this project will enable Beyond Agronomy to move towards the development of closed-loop irrigation. It is anticipated that the successful development of closed-loop irrigation solutions would bring revolution to agriculture irrigation and contribute significantly to irrigation water conservation.